Alternatives to Coaches Eye - video analysis app

We have been using Coaches’ Eye for a range of ‘skills improvement using videos’ projects. However, coaches’ eye apps struggles to run on the surface RT. Video annotation and playback is 'jerky' due to the surface RT's low spec processor.

Appcrawler offers a range of alternatives to coaches' eye. A comparative analysis of 3 apps - ubersense (ios and android), coaches' eye and dartfish - reveals coaches' eye as the only app available on Windows devices. There are more alternatives with regards to PC apps.Some of the examples looked at in previous post could be used, but apps rather than full blown PC software would be less memory hungry. MotionPro is a newer example, but at $100 plus, a bit expensive and we will also need Surface Pros to run the app.

So will still need to keep an eye for a suitable alternative. 

business apps for ipads - vodaphone presentation

A day for catching up with tools to enhance teaching and learning. After lunch, attended a vodaphone sponsored session on Ipads for business.

Presentation began with news on launch of 4G to NZ. Now available in Auckland and arriving to Christchurch in June. Focus of the event is on maximising the mobility of businesses using tablets. Monique and Rick presented. 

Video to begin with  American case studies - JacksonKayaks- of businesses using ipads to improve productivity, sales, manufacturing, marketing and design. Adoption of mobilisation still requires planning and development. Smart devices out sold PCs in 2009. In Oct. To Dec. 2012, 23 million I pads were sold! More than all categories of PC's sold. Therefore, we are in post-PC era.

To mobilise business processes, need to evaluate systems, processes and roles. Ideas of where to start form base of presentation. The key core business processes include Email calendar contacts, document management, customer info. Human resources, ordering and stocks, dashboards, training and financial systems. Mobilizing of all of the core processes now possible.

Traction in large businesses on way to already mobilised. 94% in USA. If any of the following exist,

Paper based processes a good way to start. Job roles where laptops are already issued. Back to office requirements - replaced by mobile access and interaction. Attachments shifted to real time dynamics.

Eliminating or reducing time delays.Siloed data not shared. Profligation of hardware, costs savings through consolidatiin to one device.Collateral that can be more accessible.If just one worked on to produce cost savings or increase productive. Apps need to be chosen to match the business needs.

Examples include dropbox or share plus for document sharing. Streamtime HD and Sao business editors for customer info. Hand base or fikemaker go for stock control. Micro strategy and roanvi anaytics visualiser for dashboards. Ibooks and Vmobilearn HD for training. Imvoice2go and pocketcloud for financial systems.

Important for companies to work out which business process to mobilise, which one will have most impact for effort and resources put in?

Other apps include

Presentations with keynote

Documents with documents to go, smartoffice, expert pdf

Expenses with expensify,

collaboration with gotomeeting 

Note taking with evernote, skitch,

Travel support with trip it and Itranslate.

Fundamental difference between applications on PC and apps on mobile device is specificness of apps. Might need to use a few apps to do a task usually carried on one PC application. Apps cna be individual, integrated with organisation or customised. Check app store for apps status if it is trusted, intuitive or validated.

Demonstrated evernote bringing various note types into evernte folders so that they are accesible from one space and is searchable. Also can be shared or handed to other people reducing effects of silos. Ever note hello takes a photo of business card and transfer to contacts. Then find people and network via linked in. Ever note trunk provides info. on other apps to form networks with - e.g. linkedin.

Peek works with the Ipad cover for doing questions and answers. Pdfexpert for filling in pre-formated forms. Trip it allows upload your ticket and summarises all the details. Flipboard as an RSS feeder in the form of images.

Examples of xero for setting out quotes, invoices and tracking jobs and vend for mobile transactions. Download podcasts using podcast app. Discovr app to find apps bringing up better matches than through appstore. In appstore use app collections to narrow down useful apps. Examples being apps at work or business starter.

Overall, presentation pitched at businesses trying to leverage mobilisation without incurring huge costs for customised software. Consolidation apps like evernote are the key to bringing apps together, for instance in education, to collect multimodal learning evidence using a variety of apps, store and collate into eportfolios or similar.

CPIT lunch time PD session: Mobile learning apps

The CPIT Centre for Educational Development (CED) and the Learning Technologies Unit (LTU) has been running a series of professional development sessions this term. Today’s lunch time session was on mobile apps. Almost 30 tutorial and learning support staff attended. Katrina Fisher provided some examples of the work she has been doing following completion of the Ako Aotearoa net tablets project. Included is the work on developing video content supported by quizzes and glossaries that students access via Moodle. Shifting content from tablet to Moodle opens access to web enabled hardware.

Sam Hegarty then provided a show and tell of several useful iOS apps.He started with evernote as a good option to upload content on to the cloud and access through a range of devices and operating systems.

Nearpod was met with great enthusiasm. This app allows a teacher to share the image on their screen with other iOS devices. The app includes options for quizzes, sketching, polls and picture/website/video sharing. Something we will need to test with a large number of tablets through a CPIT wifi site. The app seemed to run in a timely manner during the demo when there were about a dozen devices accessing the site.

Socrative was recommended by one of the staff as a multi-platform alternative although it did not have quite all the options that were available on Nearpod. Its main objective is to be a ‘student or audience response’ system.

Educreations allows a recording of a lesson in the form of whiteboard notes and audio. Photos can be attached and annotated. Basically a screen capture plus voice recording of a short interactive ‘learning presentation’. 

By a nice coincidence, Derek Wenmouth’s blog today was on Bring your own device (BYOD). This was one barrier raised by staff – the expense of obtaining tablets and the lack of support for non-windows OS devices at present. Therefore, an important next step is to establish institutional BYOD policy that is visible to staff and students, providing clear guidelines on what is institutionally supported.

Using video to help students' reflective learning process

As a follow up from our net tablet project, I have just started on another Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub funded project with Hospitality tutors Debbie Taylor and Heather McEwan. Two sub-projects using tablets (ipad2s and Toshiba Thrives) will be worked through. The first one is for students to use the ipad2s to video each other as they role play front office customer interactions. The second is to explore the concept of virtual field trips to replace hotel visits (as all the high end hotels in Christchurch are not inaccessible due to the 2011 earthquakes).


The first project, using the ipads to video student role plays has just started. Debbie and I are piloting this with a group of 1st year Diploma in Hospitality students. Our first hurdle was a technical one. How to attach ipads to a datashow so that Debbie could use the student videos as examples to encourage better/improved customer service practices. At present, we are trying out several cabling variations.

A literature search found several articles, mainly in the teacher education sector, on using videos to help enhance reflective practice. One article I have tapped for ideas is by Williams, G. Farmer, L. and Manwaring, M. (2008) on ‘new technology meets an old teaching challenge: Using digital video recordings, annotation software, and deliberate practice techniques to improve student negotiation skills’. The study was conducted with law students and although our project will not be going down the annotation route, I will follow up on the software mentioned in the article – Medianotes.

For the moment, we will concentrate on the ‘deliberate practice’ aspect, in particular, to identify the main skills students will need to develop, provide appropriate and timely feedback and assist the reflective learning cycle. For the feedback cycle, we will be providing students (as with previous projects) the guidelines to be able to feed up, feedback and feed forward (from  Hattie and Timperley's - power of feedback).

blogging solely on ipad and paper helper

Last week, I was away from the office for almost a week. I took along my ipad and resisted using any other computer. While away from the office, using the ipad to complete simple tasks like checking and replying to email is sufficient. For blogging, I type up notes on notepad and then copy across to the ipad blogger app.  The blogger app also allows for insertion of photos, either from the photo gallery or directly from the camera and tagging with labels. However, both notepad and the blogger app do not have a readily available hyperlink insertion function.
I have since found the app - paper helper - which has a notepad and a web browser. will need to try this out the next time I am out and about. The url of the website tends to be copied across to the notepad area instead of just a hyperlink, so will test this out to see how well it works as a replacement to the ipad's generic notepad.

Ipads in schools - Victoria Australia

Via Derek Wenmouth's blog on his experiences at a workshop on BYOD - bring your own device - at school - is the link to the ipads for education site for schools in the state of Victoria in Australia.

The case studies provide a range of ideas for using ipads and there are handy hint on implementation and evaluation of the projects. Of note is their use of individual ipads for each child and the opportunity for students to immerse themselves in the device by not only using at school but also outside of school hours.  The other important point is the integration used reported in many of the case studies. The ipads are not 'add-ons' but used as normal classroom tools where appropriate.

 Good points to bear in mind for our own project.

Setting up ipad2s for project - multiple ipads on one itunes account

Hardware for our interactive textbook project have started to arrive.  We are now organising the set up of 5 ipad2s.  Essentially, the ipad is an individual user device. Someone out there must be working on a project to find out how the selection of apps on ipad reflect your personality type, as per a book I read recently, that attributed personality types to people by examining the songs they had uploaded onto their ipod or similar (Snoop- what  your stuff says about you).

Some good hints avaialble by googling set up ipads education use from ipadschools wiki including the use of an ipad cart and apple's volume app purchase programme. Also good information on the wiki to setting up ipads for class and link to a workshop that provides information on how to lock appstore on the ipad so that students are not able to access the appstore to download apps or other items. Core-ed blog indicates the apple volume app store is not available in New Zealand (sigh).

Instructions on how to set up more than one device on on individual itunes account provided through apple support site and a youtube video. Therefore, will need to set up one itunes account on our the solitary Mac in our sandpit as our internal IT system only allows access to itunes 7.0!! and sync all the five ipads to the same account.  Apps we will put on the ipad discussed in a previous post and once these have been evaluated, we will delete or upload other apps as the project proceeds.

Therefore, one advantage of the other hardware platform for our project, the Toshiba Thrive tablets running on Android 3.0 OS already.  The Toshiba tablets came with word processor, spreadsheet and powerpoint equivalents plus Evernote along with assorted productivity apps. We will just need to add a few apps and we are ready to go. Next week, the tutors involved will work on details for introducing the tablets to their students, so lots of interesting learning to look forward to.

Student generated content on net tablets

The CPIT Foundation has approved a grant to purchase hardward for the interactive etextbooks on net tablets project. So, we are now able to move ahead with the etextbooks / eworkbooks on tablets project. One of the objectives of this project is to not only provide tutors with the opportunity to upload content, but for students to also generate content.

Katrina Fisher (barista tutor) and Peter Sauer (automotive engineering tutor) are the two tutors involved with this project next semester. Katrina and her students will use ipad 2 tablets and Peter's class on Android tablets. I have made a request to IT to purchase both the ipads and the asus eee pad . IT will be investigating Android OS tablets and have made a suggestion with the Acer Iconia Pad which also as a Windows 7 OS version. So might work on a Windows OS tablet version of the project early next year with the Engineering manufacturing team who have learning resources in the Windows environment.

Having had an ipad to play with for just on a year, I have been able to test several apps for students to generate content. These include note taking (Bamboo Paper), sketching (Doodle Buddy), post-it notes (BugMe! lite), card sorts (iCardsort), pdf annotation (pdf-notes), audio note taking (live notes lite), mindmapping (SimpleMind+) and aggregators to bring together the various items (Evernote, Scribe Lite and Catch Notes).

The equivalents of the above I have tested on our Archos are note taking and sketching (free hand note lite), post it notes (bugMe!), card sorts (flashcard maker pro), pdf aggregators (ez pdf), audio note taking (Audio Notes recorder), mind mapping (mind map memo)  and the aggregators (evernote, catch notes, emobilenotes).

So there is a good choice of apps to evaluate as to fit for purpose and user friendliness over the course of the project.

Content can be uploaded by tutors on to any of the above, or on to the photo or video players on the tablets. Plus we can also use ebook readers like Stanza for the ipad and FB reader for the Android tablets. If all else fails, we will pay for documents to go, which is available on multiple platforms. Not yet available for most Android tablets as yet with only the Archos 5 on the list (but for free).

The overall objective is to keep things simple, to explore and study the use of the apps as tools for constructive learning and for archiving / recording the learning journey, and to build guidelines for how to best use this concept to engage students, enhance learning and help students become self-directed lerners.

more tablets launched

Clearing my google reader this morning and notice the launch or eminent launch of a few new tablets being reported via endgadget.



First up, HP has launched their touchpad, with an OS based on the Palm OS, although there is no mention whatsoever of the Palm brand. It will be interesting to assess this tablet as I have always been a bit of a fan of the palm user interface and quite miss my old Treo at times.

Second one, is the possible price in the US of A of the blackberry playbook. Again will be keen to try this one out as CPIT is currently using blackberrys as their corporate phone. 

Comparisons of the various tablets also provides interesting reading. Looking forward now to the coming of the new ipad.

The perenial difficulty we face, as educational users, is the various operating systems running on different hardware platforms. So far, I have tried to work on projects that are not dependent on hardware OS. In our mobile portfolio projects, we relied solely on the phones apprentices owned. At the moment, tablets are still seen to be 'new' and most students do not own one. Instead they own mobile phones, although by observing students in the library, the number of iphones seen in students' hands seems to have increased in the last 6 months or so.

For the 'interactive textbook' project, we have committed to developing a 'front end' template for the Android OS and have purchased an Archos 7 to test drive things. So, for the first time, we will need to explore possibilites for acquiring a class set of tablets to evaluate students' experiences with using the tablet based 'textbook'. I might now also think through the advantages of running a similar 'textbook' layout via Moodle. We can then compare the two and see if reliance on hardware is really required or whether we just ram up the LMS to be accessible across all devices.

Zaggmate – ipad case and keyboard

While away from the office over the summer ‘break’ I began blogging using the ipad. However, the on screen keyboard, even on landscape, tended to limit me to a hunt and peck routine. Therefore, as an Xmas present to myself, I ordered a zaggmate ipad case. Two alternatives, one with the case only and the other with an integrated Bluetooth keypad. I have now been playing with the zaggmate keyboard/case for a couple of weeks and am pleased with its overall performance.


To begin, the case itself is strong but light and matches the smooth, minimalistic design of the ipad. When the ipad is placed into the zaggmate case, the whole looks like a chunkier mac air. Synching the ipad to the zaggmate took all of about 10 seconds. So far, no hassles with the Bluetooth link and although I have used the keyboard off and on for almost two weeks, I have not had to recharge the case/keyboard. The ipad sits sort of securely on to a ledge on the case and is held up with a plastic backpiece which is brought up from flat. I have mainly been using the keyboard on a desk but it seems to be quite solid on my lap as well. However, might not be as secure, say on an aeroplane fold out table when the flight becomes bumpy, as the ipad is only kept upright by the plastic back piece and the way it just fits the case.

The zaggmate weighs in at 200g, the ipad 680g for a total well under a kg. However, total weight still more than double of a mac air 11” (only 380g) but heaps lighter than the Mac book pro 13” which is over 2 kg and still lighter than an ASUS eee PC at around a kg.

Therefore, I now have the alternative of just using the ipad on screen keyboard for quick notes etc. and the zaggmate keyboard for when i need to get to grips with more or am working on re-editing documents. Last week, I attended a one day 'academic writing' workshop facilitated by Dr. Marianne Tremaine who advocated the use of a 15 minute daily writing time slot to raise writing productivity.  So the use of the ipad and zaggmate should assist with meeting the goal.

Ipad tips

As usual, the net is flooded with sites providing various ways to get the most out of your ipad. Gizmodo site floats up first on a google search. The most useful one here is to be able to take a screenshot – especially useful for maps of places you are about to visit.

Tech radar does a one up by providing 75 tips!! Many useful with iphone / ipod touch but a good review of the various shortcuts and ways to maximise use of the iphone OS. How to geek has a ‘definitive list’ with well laid out instructions and many tips not covered in the previous two sites, well worth a good look.  Also some interesting tips on ipad news daily including 12 little known features and the evolution of various technologies which culminate in the ipad.

All above useful toward how we can leverage the use of net tablets to enhance student learning at CPIT. Have just purchased the ipad camera kit and the ipad dock connector to VGA adaptor which I will test out over the next couple of days. 
 

Alternatives to Ipad

I had a chat with automotive tutor – Peter Sauer – who is interested in making use of the tablet as a resource tool in the automotive workshop. There is already a large computer screen and computer set up in the automotive workshop but the students rarely make use of it as it is parked in a corner of the workshop and using it means everyone else in the workshop is able to see what the user is looking for / at. Ipod touches may be a solution but the screens are too small. The mobility of the tablet along with the screen real estate will provide opportunities to use some very effective automotive reference resources to be accessible in the workshop. Some of the resources include 3D models of engines which can be ‘exploded’ out and the details of each engine part scrutinised.


The cost of ipads makes it expensive for apprentices to purchase. Also, we will probably need a robust tablet which will stand up to the hard surfaces in an automotive workshop. The screen will also need to withstand being continually prodded by greasy fingers! So the hunt is now on for an appropriate device which is not too expensive but robust. There are alternatives to the ipad including 7 here and 10 here plus a NZ specific report.

Android OS tablets seem to be about to take off and there is a blog with the latest news on various Android OS tablets about to be launched. We might have to source these on the internet as I can not see many of these devices making it on to the NZ market. I will need to keep an eye out for them when I am in Hong Kong and Singapore in October. I am only in each country very briefly, so will need to do some research before I go, to work out the best places to view and do some hands on try out with any that are available by October this year.

The Palmpad using Web OS might be also launched by then, although early 2011 seems to be a more likely date. I have always been a fan of the Web OS on palm devices having used 4 palm devices. So it will be interesting to see what comes about.

Windows 7 powered tablets seem to have struck a bit of a challenge, with several reviewers, including this one, providing poor reviews. So, there seems to be many about to be launched and a few already available.  The ipad will still be the standard most people will use as a reference point for other tablets.

Ipad - convenience and mlearning tool

The mobility of netbooks / ipad along with Wifi has changed the way in which my family interacts. Both my ‘kids’ (one 22 , the other 25) are currently back at home. The younger establishing herself into work after completing uni. last year & the older back home a month ago, after a 6 month break in Thailand and a couple of years working in Melbourne. He is now back at Polytechnic doing a Cert. in Fitness course. Most evenings, we are gathered around the TV, each with netbook (2 eee PCs), ipad or ipod touch (2 of them), surfing the web, playing games, reading etc. while the 6pm news does its best to bring our attention back to things happening in the big wide world. The husband now has the daily newspapers all to himself but does borrow the ipad for his bit of web surfing as well, he finds the ipod touch screen too small. So besides comments on what is happening on the news, we also share sites we are surfing, latest videos, music, compare scores on games (Scramble2), plan movies to see or walk/tramp/ski trip over the weekend. In the past, we tended to each be busy at our computers & four to five years ago, just before both of them left home, they had TVs in their rooms. We actually now interact socially much more in the evening then we used to!!


From the education focus, I have never been a great fan of teaching in computer suites. The students ‘hide’ behind their computers and group activity, peer interaction is difficult when the physical barrier of a large computer screen prevents people from seeing each other properly. Access to WIFI and encouraging students to make use of laptops/netbooks/ipads presents teachers with a much better physical environment which can be flexibly reorganised to enhance learning activities taking place in the classroom. Untethered web access leads to mobility and the opportunity for students and teachers to centre learning on the tasks at hand.

The classroom then becomes a true learning space as access to information relevant to the lesson is much more easily sourced. This information can then form the basis of learning moments for students and teachers.
Here and here are comprehensive lists of links to various ipod touch/ipad apps – many educational including a good list from Rasmussen college. Also an example of an interactive book in the digital form of a well loved NZ book - Hairy Maclary of Donaldson Diary with a video trailer.

Ipad - ebooks and elit

The ipad launched in NZ last Friday. Although I have had the ipad for a couple of weeks, I have not had much time to really play with it. So far, I have been able to evaluate the ipod touch apps I want to keep and update any ipod touch apps which have ipad versions. Of note is Stanza which is my present ebook reader platform. The added capability which I love is being able to add files off my computer easily and transfer these on to the ipad. Stanza allows various ebooks I have purchased over the years which are .epub files to be read along with .pdf files. So I am now able to more easily access my rather large collection of study / research articles on the ipad. I have always been a fan of reading with a digital device and the ipad’s display really enhances the experience. As recommended on the Stanza FAQ, calibre can be used to convert various file formats into .epub or .pdf. which is user friendly and not only converts the books but also had a nifty ebook reader as well.

However, reading print books on an ipad is rather old hat although more ebooks are now sole through Amazon than hard cover books. So the next thing to work on is to evaluate the collection of elit and also here. This article features the multimodalities possible by bringing digital technologies into books. All require multimedia players and the ones which run on shockwave or flash will not run on an ipad (sigh). However, many of the examples are reminiscent of music videos, with audio of poems running with visual presentations, often with fast moving or scrolling images or using animations. Some have interactive sections or use text graphics to tell the story. Many are art forms rather than actual narratives but all tell a story of sorts. Here is an example which runs on a Mac. A guide to writing elit provides for some interesting approaches and ideas.

So it will be worthwhile looking into the future of textbooks and also children's literature which has been the natural home for interactive books for a while, exampled by one Kiwi company's approach to putting Kiwi classics on the ipad.

iPad evaluation

I managed to pick up an iPad just before I left Perth, from the recently opened local Apple Store – a beautifully laid out and designed store with ultra friendly, knowledgeable & young staff. There has been a real demand for the iPads in Perth and I had been following a thread on the local discussion forum as to where there might be one about. So when I went into the Apple store last Wed. morning and had to leave my email to be advised of the next shipment, I was not holding out much hope of getting my hands on one there. It would have to be at least another month or more before the iPad gets to NZ. Anyway, a shipment did arrive & I was able to pick a 16G WIFI model up :) on Thursday evening. Too busy to do much with it until I got back home yesterday and then was able to upload apps, music, videos and photos from iTunes on to it.

Synching everything across went well but the photos were not ported across as my iPad was only 16G & the ipod touch I have been using has 32G. So had to delete several apps & tidy up music to allow for more space. All apps work well although being ipod touch apps, they do not make use of the whole of the iPad’s screen. Will need to explore iPad specific apps next and evaluate a few which may be useful in a voc. ed. context. So if I want to also access email etc. will have to be careful with the types of media the iPad will hold. So 16G may not be the best option if you have lots of media to access. Other option is to store things on itunes and only sync across media you intend to use, archiving others for access when required.

As with the ipod touch, user friendliness of the interface is a great plus factor. The one thing which is really impressive about the iPad is the screen display and this makes it a worthwhile piece of hardware to undertake work on introducing it as a mobile learning device. There have been several articles on how to use the iPad in education including pros & cons, with two Universities in the U S of A making it a compulsory piece of hardware for their students to bring to college.

The screen real estate makes the use of the iPad as a ebook reader & hence a text book a logical progression especially if the text book was much more interactive and there was WIFI available both within & without the classroom to allow students to explore topics in greater depth through featured website links, embedded interactive quizzes, links to relevant discussion forums etc. So lots of possibilities to explore.

Future of the use of technology in learning aka currently as mlearning

Organising myself for conferences this year. The last bits of the $$ available from my tertiary teaching excellence award will be going towards several conferences in Europe which have an emphasis on mobile learning. First up would be Handheld 2010 from 10th to 13th of October in London, then a Forum Oxford: futures technologies conference on 15th October followed on with the annual mlearning 2010 conference in Malta from 19th to 22nd October.

I will be evaluating the progress of papers on mlearning and to work out if I will continue to follow this area of research. My work into apprenticeship learning is taking up much of my energies at the present. It is an area with very little research focus and therefore important to continue with. The use of technology into teaching is now, for many tutors at CPIT, a way of integrating technology into helping students learn.


My view on mlearning is that very very soon, all technology assisted learning will be mobile. It’s sort of the normal way which learners should be approaching learning, anytime and anywhere. It’s no different to what has taken place for 100s of years when we carried books around and read them when on the go and dipped into reference books whenever we had to find things out. Technology now enables this to take place much more efficiently. Instead of carrying a couple of books, I now carry hundreds on my ipod touch, instead of waiting to get home to look up something, I now google it if there is wifi available. Just in time approach is an innate human response. Wifi availability is also now becoming much more ubiquitious. For instance, there is 15 minutes of free Wifi available at my local Christchurch airport and Wellington airport offers free Wifi. The last three conferences I attended had free Wifi available to delegates. People now assume they will be connected wirelessly and for no cost.

The early work of mlearning learning on’micro learning’ etc. and working with small screens is all but obsolete with the coming of nettabs like the ipad. With an ipad, there is no need to reconfigure LMS like Moodle or web pages to optimise interaction with the hardware. The ease of use of the ipad will change the nature of how we access and utilise information. Therefore, before we know it, mlearning will be normal technology assisted learning. There has been a flurry of articles on using the ipad in education including pros and cons and various uses in learning.

Over the weekend, I caught up with an interesting presentation from Dr.dana boyd at Games based learning 2010 which was held recently. This presentation provides some suggestions for educators in leveraging social networks for enhancing student learning. For educators, there is a need to understand what technologies are out there, who uses them, how they are used and why. How these technologies are ‘rupturing’ the way in which how young people see the world and the role of educators in helping young people get the most out of technologies. She covers perceptive insights into the implications for young people and educators using social networking sites as examples. All of the social networking sites are now accessible via mobile devices and this migration from desktop to mobile is accelerating.

Also in the same conference, Professor James Gee presented a good overview of the role of games in providing situated learning opportunities for students which I am going to evaluate for suitability as a resource for my adult learning principles course. He is one of the members of the New London Group who authored the paper on the "pedagogy of multiliteracies" which is informing my practice and the various research projects I am working on at the moment. 
 
Both the above presentations provide justification and food for thought on how technology may contribute to enhancing learning for students plus the ways in which ubiquitious computing is now almost mainstream.
 

Nettabs and google wave - two new items to enhance mobile learning

Did a catch up on various tech and edu blogs last week. Looks like there is more learning to be undertaken on mobile learning technology with the launch of two items which may assist in bringing mobile learning more into the forefront.

First up there are nettabs, which are an upgrade of netbooks and an adaptation/ improvement to current tablet laptops. Nettabs are to rise in visibility and usage in 2010.  As tablets have been on the expensive end of the market, nettabs are set to lower the cost of tablet devices, make them smaller and lighter and with more user friendly features.  The Lenova Ideapad is an example.  However, last week's much blogged announcement by Apple on their iPad  raised the bar for all nettab manufacturers. An elegant design with a price tag of US$499 for it's 16G Wifi model - making it around just over NZ$700 although may be sold here at closer to NZ$800.  A 64G ipod touch is sold at NZ$699 (which is advertised for US$399 at the US of A apple store).

The next item of interest is Google Wave.  Jane Hart provides a good review of Google Waves uses in education along with various sites and readings on it's potential. I signed up for a preview membership & email providing access arrived within 24 hours.  The main advantages to Google wave is the blending of email with IM & social networking tools which allow photos, videos and documents to be shared.  You set up a 'wave' & invite others to join you.  There are possibilities for Google wave to be easily used as an eportfolio repository.  All entries can be shared and archived. The wiki capability could then be used to do the 'showcase'/ building CV / present eportfolio part of a eportfolio. I will have a good play with Google wave over the next couple of months with ipod touch, PSP2 & mobile phone to see how easy it is to operate using mobile devices.